Valve has officially announced that they are bringing their Steam game distribution platform and library of games to the Mac in April. This includes popular titles like Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half Life series at launch.

"Our Steam partners, who are delivering over a thousand games to 25 million Steam clients, are very excited about adding support for the Mac," said Jason Holtman, Director of Business Development at Valve. "Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs, and we have added a new feature, called Steam Play, which allows customers who purchase the product for the Mac or Windows to play on the other platform free of charge."

The company also announced that its upcoming Portal 2 game will be their first simultaneous release for the Mac and Windows.

"Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step," said Josh Weier, Portal 2 Project Lead. "We're always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac."

It would be nice if the Steam client was optional. I prefer using the Impulse system which has a better DRM philosophy and no need for internet connections once a particular game is downloaded/installed.

I've been playing Bejeweled 2 so much lately. Well, that and Farmville with my buds on FB.

Signal2Noise wrote:

It would be nice if the Steam client was optional. I prefer using the Impulse system which has a better DRM philosophy and no need for internet connections once a particular game is downloaded/installed.

Does Valve offer that as well with certain games? I'm not familiar with the term.

Can't wait to see the minimum specs required. A lot of us have a Mac mini with intel GMA950, it would be a shame to not at least let us play at the lowest settings._________________Mac mini 2010 (Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz/8 GiB)
12" PowerBook (G4 1.5 GHz/512 MiB)
1st gen. iPod touch (16 GiB)
2nd gen. iPod shuffle (1 GiB)

I'm probably showing my age here, but I don't get what's so great about the Steam part. The other developers still have to decide if they want to port their games over or whatever. Am I missing something? I don't really follow the world of PC gaming.

Steam itself isn't so hot, but from what I hear, this version is much better than the first iteration. What the arrival of Steam brings is Valve's games. Starting with Half Life 2, one of the greatest adventure games ever, to Counter Strike, which forever was the number one First Person Shooter. Valve's made a big comeback with Portal ( a must for puzzle fans ), to Team Fortress 2 ( a favorite FPS of mine on the Xbox 360 ), and the very popular Left 4 Dead 1 & 2. Valve though has cemented it's following by constantly updating their games for free. FREE!! ( Which is why Team Fortress 2 died a horrible death on the 360, since M$ doesn't like giving anything away for free ) Fans were upset about Left 4 Dead 2 coming out so soon behind the debut of Left 4 Dead, but they update the first still.

Cool touch, Left 4 Dead will across platforms. Yes, Mac players can play with and against PC players.

TF2 is a ton of fun. I'm just glad that I upgraded Mac minis a couple months ago. None of this stuff is going to be a go with the GMA 950 or X3100. I know TF2 wasn't playable on my older Mac mini with Boot Camp. Even on the lowest resolution video setting it was well under 10 FPS.

So will all those titles I've purchased on Steam for the PC, be on my Mac version of steam without having to pay twice???_________________Current: 20" iMac 2.4GHZ 2GB RAM 500GB HDD 10.6 using a 1TB Time Capsule, 2.4GHZ Macbook and 2G 16GB iPhone.